Search This Blog

Strange Update 7-12-17

I spent a lot of the past two months dealing with life stuff- as life happens- death of family and a pet and the things that come along with it- I also spent a week at the hospital in UCLA to support a friends father who went through a serious surgery-

UCLA hospital window view

When I was in LA I did get to visit with my friend Ricky Grove- thanks for the ride to Santa Monica Ricky! I wanted to walk around the neighborhood I used to live and meet up with the people I was there too see-

While stuck in traffic Ricky and I were coming up with a list of movies to play in a suicide theater- a theater that has a gun chained to the wall near the door- I remember adding "Castaway" and "You've got mail" to that list-

Also when I was in LA I ate at the same place everyday- I love Persian food so this place is the BEST- Excellent, excellent food-

Anyway-As I had to deal with other things I wasn't able to work much in the past two months due to these events, travel, etc-

I did draw a little bit though- here's some of my drawings from that time period-

I carry my sketch/idea book wherever I go- I think that I tend to draw images that express my current thoughts and emotions- this helps me vent and process them I believe-

Once I was back home from the two months of life stuff I felt confused and lost- work usually guides my life so without work I was lost for a little bit- so I knew I needed to recenter and ground myself- I got on my daily exercise routine + a little meditation and a lot of time spent alone to process my thoughts as I had a big back log I needed to go through-

Since I don't drive- my only local escape from the increasingly scummy San Jose streets is the Highway 17 Express bus that goes over the hill to Santa Cruz- the closest beach town-

Since I don't use a mobile phone if I need to communicate magically to humans I try to get on wifi to use google voice or find a pay phone

The payphone at the bus stop was in bad shape but you could make free calls to god so claimed a yellow sticker-

Something I noticed in both San Jose and Santa Cruz recently is the increase in loud mentally ill homeless people in the downtown areas- walking through them is sorta like walking through an open air urine soaked asylum is some spots-

btw- This is in the center of "SILICON VALLEY" which is one of the richest cities in America yet it is scummy/dirty as hell- In my recent travels around California it's all pretty shitty now in non rich places- people living in tents/tarp shacks on sides of freeways- trash everywhere- broken/dilapidated infrastructure-

Btw- here's a famous yelling guy from my neighborhood I recorded

Speaking of that- I had posted on my blog awhile back about my cat being killed- I thought it was from being hit by a car BUT I learned from a neighbor that he was killed by a mentally ill homeless person that was making "exorcist" sounds- the police were called etc but nothing came about from it-

I found a homeless man in the neighborhood making "exorcist" sounds and followed him one day- he went to a local soup kitchen wherein I confronted him-

He went on to explain in a matter of fact manner that he was in fact suffering from "demonic possession" - He was intelligent- a former software engineer I learned- but yeah he makes these crazy ass sounds and claims to be under attack from a "warlock" sigh-

So in my neighborhood now- in addition to the screaming guy in the above clip- is some fat santa claus looking dude riding around his bike making exorcist sounds claiming to be possessed by demons who seems to have killed my cat and another down the street that was found in a similar manner to how mine was a week later-

The guy showed me a dirty old business card of his- I looked the name up and sure enough the dude has an active fakebook page- he never mentions the "demons" in his posts though- just inane banter about what other people are doing in the tech world-

I just thought it was interesting how if you looked his fakebook page over he would seem to be a "normal" person and had "normal" online friends-

When I talked to him he went on and on about the "demons" so I was really surprised to not see any mention of it on his profile-

So I take this bus over to the beach place and walk along with water for a couple miles to this beach called Natural Bridges- it's nice and quiet there- I like to sit at these benches-

I actually spent a lot of my childhood at this beach/park- usually searching for insects and reptiles in the bushes-

Speaking of that I encountered a Pale Green Assassin Bug for the first time last week-

It was just a nymph but I was still stoked- Assassin bugs are fascinating/weird/scary little creatures-

Now since I'm back to work I've been thinking a lot about my current game project and whether I should abandon it or not- You've never even seen it so you don't even know what I'm talking about haha-

Its some big ambitious thing I've spent over a year on and it's very close to a finished state BUT knowing what I know now from more study and experience its a mess AND I have to decide whether it's worth finishing-

Long story short- I began fine tuning systems in that game before all systems were completed- before all the interactions between the systems was considered and finalized- in other words- I got too excited about what I was doing and fine tuned some things while other important things weren't even roughed out- it creates a state of confusion and imbalance in the project that makes it a pain to work on-

So I might just cut my losses and abandon the project-

Meanwhile with my new perspective on game dev from making lots of mistakes ^_^ I've begun to document all my best new game/game mechanic ideas and will be using techniques from this article to quickly prototype them -

Up until now I have been prototyping my game ideas BUT I was not seeing the truth in them- if it wasn't fun after a week or so I'd say I need to "work on this system or that system"- lots of time passes and its still not fun-

So now I'm going to jam on them for a week and if it sucks I'll abandon it and go on to the next- I'm 2 days in to a new idea and so far so good ^_^

It feels like I'm finally beginning to understand how to prototype games properly-

This is the end of my update- best to you and yours.

M.

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Comments

You are welcome, brother. I'd drive you to heaven or hell. Whatever you want. Just as long as we can crack jokes and brain jam. I'm glad you were able to help your friend. Friends are everything especially when you to be an old fucker like me.

I like your trip to the beach. Sounds like a good place to just relax and think. Too bad about your game project. Maybe it's just that you were to learn a lot from it for your next game. Probably should move on instead of moving around the stuff you've created.

Homelessness is only going to get worse. I just hope people wake up and start trying figure out how to help people so they don't become homeless in the first place.

My goal with this game is to scare you- to create a creepy environment and give you a strange, terrifying experience in which you never know what might happen.

Most of the game takes place in first person but you do play as a ping pong ball in third person at one point so you can douse yourself in gasoline 0_0

The reason that its PC only at this time is that I'm using DirectX features in the game and DirectX is not supported on the Mac- sorry about that-

I MIGHT be creating a version of POWERLESS for the Occulus Rift- I have to see how difficult it is to do so- if its relatively easy AND the game is light enough to keep 60fps or whatever the Rift needs I'll do it- I know very little of the process so I have to learn a lot about it-

I mixed two indie feature films in the past few months and I've mixed my own three feature films so I've had some practice editing a film then sending the audio files out to be mixed in a DAW-

This is the easy way to do it- I'm going to use Premiere Pro for my examples but this is the same process for Final Cut Pro or any other NLE-

When you are editing it is good practice to separate your audio tracks into dialogue, fx, music, and ambience tracks like this

You can have multiple dialog, fx, music and ambient sound tracks but its good practice to keep them separate- you don't want to say.... have dialog, music and fx on the same track- keep all those things separate-

It makes it easier for you and the mixer is going to have to separate them anyway- so if you do it for them you'll save money and make the mixer's job faster-

Looking at the example-What you would want to do is export one track for Dialogue01, one for Dialogue02, one for Fx01 etc- so from that examp…